


Have Mercy

by stilettos_and_gin



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-04-26 19:01:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5016520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stilettos_and_gin/pseuds/stilettos_and_gin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>John waits until he’s on the train to switch his phone back on.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>There are a dozen missed calls. John ignores them, glaring at the little red icon on the screen.  He doesn’t have the energy for ‘welcome home’.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Have Mercy

**Author's Note:**

> a toast to absent friends

John waits until he’s on the train to switch his phone back on. He sits by the baggage rack, shoulders jostled by London commuters with no sense of space, their massive handbags taking up more room than John’s ops bag, bergen, and daysack combined. His shoulders ache as the train pulls out of the station, phone screen flickering blearily to life.

There are a dozen missed calls. John ignores them, glaring at the little red icon on the screen. Text messages spill through in groups. Six now. Ten. Thirteen. He flicks the message box open and scrolls from the bottom to the top, clearing them all without reading. He doesn’t have the energy for ‘welcome home’.

The last message comes through just as his thumb hovers over the screen lock.

_“Lympstone. Trains from CHM @ 26 past the hour. When you’re ready. J”_

John’s mouth flickers up in a grin. He doesn’t press delete.

* * *

The guard gives his MoD90 a cursory glance before waving him through. John’s still carrying a tan from the desert, and the ops bag slung over one shoulder is still streaked with Afghan dirt. He walks up the hill, following the signs for the officer’s block and then heading on up the hill to the training centre.

He finds the right door, holding it open wide for three lads who mutter ‘thank you sir’ as they run up the stairs ahead of him. It’s a new course-load, kids in green tripping over their own feet and ricocheting off the walls as they try to complete impossible tasks to impossible timescales. John feels old as he pushes up the stairs, keeping left. The recruits avoid him on instinct.

There’s a briefing happening on the landing – 30 recruits who don’t look like Marines yet shifting from foot to foot as a corporal spits colourful insults at them. His eyes skim the ranks, meet John’s with a question. John nods, steps back down one step, lets him get on with the job.

The hallway clears, and John moves on again, shifts his bag on his shoulder as he scans the notice board.

Sholto’s door is open, the man himself bent over a pile of paperwork. He doesn’t glance up at the knock, a terse ‘yes’ and flick of his head.

“567839, Captain Watson, 5th Northumberland Fusiliers, Sir,” he says, and Sholto’s head shoots up, face split wide in a grin. “You better have a kettle in this shithole of an office.”

* * *

The tea tastes faintly of hand soap, but it’s warm and doesn’t have grit in it, and John drinks it down readily, mug cradled in his palms. There’s not a lot of space in Sholto’s office, but John drags a spare poly-prop chair across, kicks his feet up on the desk and crosses his ankles.

They talk in fragments. Training corporals poke their heads in, glance at John, and deliver their messages anyway. Sholto deals with them all in that same patient way that John is used to, voice low and calm and caring. It’s soothing to sink back into it all, the hustle and bustle of training where everything is urgent but nothing is important.

Sholto catches John’s grin before he can hide it, returns it two-fold.

“Transfer,” he says, and it’s not a command exactly, but it holds more weight than a suggestion.

“I’d hate it, mate,” John says. He would. The game-playing frustrates him, the arrogance of the new recruits gets under his skin and his own cruelty flashes too close to the surface.  
Sholto doesn’t push, he never has done, and John is grateful.

He makes himself useful, wandering down to the NAAFI to fetch milk and applying fablon to two maps and a wall planner. It’s soothing just to be around the familiar. Post-Op leave has its uses, but John is too antsy rattling around the flat on his own with nothing to do.

“Should’ve gone skiing,” he mutters, laying the map out on the floor and pinning the uncooperative fablon to it with his knees.

“You hate skiing,” Sholto reminds him, toe of his boot brushing mockingly over the curve of John’s arse. John arches just to be contrary, and visits from the training NCOs become oddly more frequent over the course of the afternoon.

* * *

Training days are long, and Sholto goes out in the afternoon to the training area to set up the field exercise for the next day. John’s invited, of course, but he’s not a spaniel, he doesn’t need to follow James around like that.

He takes Sholto’s keys instead and walks up to the officer’s block, letting himself into Sholto’s room and setting his bag down on the floor. It’s nice accommodation, spacious and newly re-furbished, en-suite in the corner, double-bed, and a sofa that would probably pull out into a bed of its own if John could be bothered to inspect it. Instead, he sits down on the bed and flicks the TV on, scrolling through the channels to Sky Sports News.

James wakes him much later, a steady hand on John’s shoulder shaking him awake. For a second, John scrabbles for a rifle, stomach sinking when he finds it gone. But James’s hand is there, on his wrist, stilling his frantic search.

“Dinner?” he asks, letting go once John sits up.

“Would be lovely,” John says, scrubbing a hand over his face.

He changes his shirt more for something to do with his hands than because Sholto demands it.

“You need feeding up,” Sholto tells him, looking pointedly at John’s ribs.

* * *

They go off base for dinner, steak and chips and dark heavy beer in a darker pub somewhere. John eats like a starving man, still catching up on his calories, though the meat is good and the chips hot and fluffy on the inside.

“Anything I need to know?” Sholto asks, quietly, returning with their third round as John puts his fork down at last.

The beer is bitter and heavy on his tongue, and John’s tolerance is still depleted enough for it to take the edges away, the pub gold and dark and warm around him. He shuffles his chair a little closer to the wall, pinned into the corner by Sholto and the directness of his question.

“Picked up a few more ghosts,” he says at last, feels them loom large over his shoulder for a moment and then fade again. “Ran my luck down to the bone, I think.”

He shivers, despite the warmth of the pub. Sholto doesn’t look away, but his face is carefully emotionless, and his eyes show no pity at all.

“Sleeping?” Sholto asks.

“Too quiet,” John tells him, raising his pint again and drowning a toast to absent friends.

* * *

Sholto’s hand is warm in the small of John’s back as he unlocks the door to the officers’ block and guides John through. It’s quiet, but it carries the hum of an occupied building, and John can’t help but smile as they cross the hallway and ascend the stairs.

“I think we’re done for the night,” Sholto tells him, and leads him past the door to the lounge and on to his room.

John’s bag his migrated to the floor, and he flops down on the bed, sprawling across the bottom of it, tired from good beer and a steady walk in the cool English autumn.

“Don’t fall asleep on me yet,” Sholto tells him, but he crosses the room and sits down on the bed himself, gentle fingers on the underside of John’s jaw so he can turn his face up to study it. John wants to close his eyes under the assessing blue gaze, to hide from whatever Sholto reads there. James is as bright and as terrifying as a firefight, and John is drawn to him just the same.

Whatever Sholto sees, he doesn’t share it, though his fingers brush along John’s cheek as he pulls them away.

John sits up slowly, still careful with his weight, and heads off to the bathroom to scrub his face.

* * *

There’s no question of finding another bed. John slips his jeans off in the bathroom, brushes his teeth, stares for a moment at the sunken face in the mirror, and opens the door to walk into the inevitable.

James kisses him like he’s precious, just his mouth, head bent down to meet John’s lips. He sucks on John’s lips, on his tongue, teases slick and hot into John’s mouth, his hands resting at his sides. John drowns in it, closes his eyes and lets himself fall, forwards against James’s chest, upwards into more devastating kisses that strip the last of his armour from him.

They’re not fragile, either of them, and John feels the shadows all around him, turning his hands to claws as he tugs at James’s shirt, desperate for skin. He’s not gentle, can’t find the peace to be, and his own teeth are sharp at James’s lips. Cotton fights and then gives under his hands, and he pulls on James’s collar, breaks their kissing to strip the shirt from his back.

It’s a fight then, John’s desperation at war with James’s need to touch and to soothe. His hands curl around John’s wrists, hold them steady for a moment, and John can feel the thump of his own pulse against James’s thumbs. With a sharp twist, he breaks the hold, angry now, and his hands become claws, tearing at the flies of James’s jeans, desperate and furious and burning from the inside out.

He strips himself far more quickly, pulling his t-shirt over his head and pushing his boxers down his thighs until his cock springs free. James touches him then, slides heavy hands down both sides of John’s ribcage to settle on his waist, and John arches his back, encourages the hot side of skin against skin.

James twists them around, lays John down on the bed and runs his hands all over him. It’s too slow and too much and not enough all at once, and John writhes on the sheets, closing his eyes to better revel in James’s touch.

“Steady,” James tells him, and John obeys from pure habit, breathing in deep as James’s hands bracket his hips, his mouth closing over John’s cock.

“Can’t,” John tells him, curling his hands into the duvet as James swallows him down. It’s been too long and John is too close to the edge already. It hurts to breathe, stars spilling across his eyelids, and John focuses on the anchoring weight of James’s hand on his stomach, pressing him down on the bed even as John pushes into the wet heat.

Coming is like opening his eyes under the water and watching the darkness pouring over him. He moans, too loud, spine arching up against James’s hands as he spills down his throat.  
“Better?” James asks him as he pulls away, and John’s fingers hurt where he uncurls his hands from the duvet and bats vaguely at James’s face.

* * *

It takes a while to come down, and John lets his body be manipulated, lets James move his weight around the bed, twisting him around and pulling him under the covers. His eyelids itch with inexplicable tears, and he is grateful when Sholto leaves him for a moment, switching off the lights and plunging the room into darkness.

“How do you want it?” He murmurs when James crawls into bed again, still fever-hot, his cock pressed against John’s hip.

James’s teeth close lightly around John’s ear, and then he’s kissing down the side of John’s neck and desperation starts to build again, slower this time, but just as consuming. He rolls James onto his back so he can crawl over him, pin James down and kiss him for real.

“Three Continents,” James mutters and John laughs against his lips, rocks his hips just to draw a gasp from James’s mouth.

“I earnt it,” he says, sliding a hand down between them to curl around James’s cock, stroking over the tip as he ducks his head to mouth over James’s nipples. James writhes underneath him, and John concentrates on getting him off with his hands, pinning him to the bed to keep him exactly where he wants him.

James is vocal, tactile, his hands skittering down John’s back, kneading and pressing and holding him where he needs him the most. He comes with a broken sound, ducking his head to hide his face in the crook of John’s neck, messy kisses as he spills across John’s hand and his own stomach.

* * *

John wakes at midnight, but his back is warm where it is pressed to James’s chest. The duvet is tangled around his legs and he shakes them free gently, soothed by the cool air in the room, the steady sound of James’s sleeping breath.

“Hush,” James tells him, his arm tightening fractionally around James’s waist. “Just stay here with me.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Gaslight's [Have Mercy](http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/gaslightanthem/havemercy.html):
>
>> So don't ask me where I've been  
> Cause you don't want to know  
> And don't ask me who I'm seeing  
> No, you don't want to know  
> And don't come around me here  
> When I need you the most  
> Leave it alone
>> 
>> Leave a little room for the holy ghost


End file.
